Top 5 Tips to Prepare Your Home’s Plumbing and Heating for the Holidays

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…provided your home plumbing and heating behave themselves all season long! When you have guests coming over and will be hosting celebrations, you have a lot on your mind.

When your plumbing and heating are working well, you don’t think about them. That’s the beauty of it. However, when something goes wrong, it’s amazing how quickly it becomes a top priority. Fortunately, a few simple preventative measures can be all it takes to make sure you avoid a plumbing or heating emergency.

To make sure your holidays are emergency-free and that the memories you make with your guests are all happy ones, use the following tips to keep the season warm and dry.

1 – Get Your Heater Ready

If you’ve already had a McLoughlin heating expert over for your annual furnace checkup, then you’re pretty much ready to go. Just make sure you have spare filters on hand so you can change them every month and you’re likely all set.

However, if you haven’t had your yearly furnace maintenance appointment yet, do yourself a favor and make one now. That way, our HVAC technician will make sure everything is tuned up and running at its best. Any issues can be cleared up while they’re still minor.

2 – Check Your Vents and Registers

As everything gets moved around to prepare for your guests and to decorate your home, vents and registers can be inadvertently blocked. To ensure the proper function of your heater and to prevent fires, do a check of all your registers and cold air intake vents to be sure there isn’t anything blocking them or sitting too close. That way, the air will flow freely and you won’t risk disaster.

3 – Check Your Water Heater

Consult your owner’s manual and make sure it’s on the right setting for the number of people it will need to serve. This will help to make sure everyone will have enough hot water for their showers while they’re staying at your place. If it hasn’t been working as well as you know it should, call a McLoughlin plumbing expert to check it for you. Afterward, you’ll know it’s ready for the increased workload and can be confident that your showers won’t be left in the cold!

4 – Get Your Toilet Ready

For most people, cleaning the toilet will be enough prep before guests come over. However, if you want to be especially vigilant in preventing bathroom catastrophe while your guests are over, there are a few extra things you can do:

• Make sure there’s lots of toilet paper available and be sure to place replacement rolls in an obvious location. This will help to prevent the use of tissues as emergency toilet paper. Tissues are not made the same way as toilet paper and will rapidly cause nasty clogs.
• Check the toilet for leaks and have them repaired before the toilet’s heavy use makes them much worse.
• Keep a trash can within reach of the toilet. This will help to prevent unflushables such as tissues and feminine hygiene products from being flushed as a last resort.
• Keep a plunger handy. A good flange-style plunger can rapidly move toilet clogs out of the way (keep in mind that the cup-style plungers are better for sink and tub drains).

5 – Prepare Your Sink and Tub Drains

Check all under-sink drain pipes for leaks. Check all sink and tub drains to be sure they’re flowing freely. Slow-running drains will become much slower very fast with the extra workload from all your guests. Clearing them before your guests arrive will prevent all kinds of problems. Call McLoughlin Plumbing, Heating and Cooling at 610-624-8037. We’ll send an expert plumbing professional at your next available convenience to clear up the issue. That way, once your guests arrive, you can place your focus on celebrating and entertaining.